 Four years ago I was looking in from my room in Beijing on the 32nd floor. It was actually really horrible I couldn't even see the other side of the street completely covered in smoke And it was a very sad and a very disturbing image. This is from 2005 to 2016 the increase in NO2 the pollution. So you see America is getting cleaner Asia like China and India is getting more and more polluted So if we zoom in into Beijing where we look at the PM 2.5 Beijing. So I love Beijing. I learned so much from it But right now if you are in the city there, it's the same as 17 cigarettes per day This takes five six years of our life schools are being shut down It costs 321 million US dollar per year in Beijing region only Like like like the healthcare and the schools are shutting down and the traffic problems, etc And of course, it's not just China. It's not just Beijing if we go to London five weeks ago London was more polluted in Beijing. So Paris, Mexico City, Medellin, places in Kazakhstan Delhi every city has its problems. I wanted to make something within the now So for me, it's about connecting things the science and the art So this is the largest smoke vacuum cleaner in the world which sucks up polluted air from the top Capturing the PM 2.5 PM 10 particles. These are particles 40 times smaller than your hair So normally you cannot see them smell them or taste them But what this tower does is that it works with positive ionization I remember that when I was a boy I had this this plastic balloon and when you polish it with your hand It of course becomes static static electrified. It starts to attract your hair So we started to use that principle to literally suck it up build the largest smoke vacuum cleaner Capturing the PM 2.5 PM 10 particles and I'm releasing the clean air So we have parks which are 40 to 70 percent more clean than the rest of the city Electricity is of course very important So we try to make this as energy-friendly as possible around a thousand watts and we wouldn't make it solar paneled We launched a scientific report together with the University of Eindhoven Which shows the effect of the tower and the clean air parks So one tower will of course not solve the whole problem for a city. Otherwise we would all be billionaires It's always in combination with green energy We want to make something on a local scale and it actually works And what is interesting is that the local day Dalian people they are calling it already the clean air temple So they go there with their children to hang out And it's been great to work together with the World Economic Forum and the governors and the mayors to make sure how we can design cities Where hopefully in 10 15 years these kind of towers are not necessary anymore It's great to be here to sort of tickle these governors and these mayors and say oh is this possible? Yes, it's possible